VANITAS
: a journal of poetry, writings by artists, criticism, and essays. During its decade of intervention in the public realm, VANITAS came out quasi-annually, serving as a forum for international voices with an emphasis on coming to grips with current world situations. Each issue contained writings by artists whose primary modes were non-literary and featured the work of a visual artist. [www.vanitasmagazine.net]

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Hillary Clinton greets a
supporter following her address at the 18th Annual David N. Dinkins
Leadership and Public Policy Forum at Columbia University in New York: photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters via the Guardian, 29 April 2015

Because her hair looked coolBecause some of the best alien minds are watching developments closely
Because she is the traditional Daisy poised fragile before the masculine millsOf production, yet wearing out six black pants suitsTo bring us to acculturation and consequenceBecause the Nasdaq is plunging and there is a mandate for change
Sweeping through the gentle bacteria that make their home in her tireless campaign shoesBecause the worried market takes comfort in knowing what it must consumeBecause choosing is not an issue except to the terrified cartoon eyeballs
In the take-out carton, wondering whose turn is first
Because some of the best alien minds consider "us" the shrill-voiced uncertainty factorThat threatens to bring the whole cosmic chorus to its whimpering kneesBecause Utopia is the island in time that forgot itself as it lifted its utensil
At the altar of its great consuming goddess No Memory, with her sadclown smile strainedBecause her lofty position at the social fulcrum which is the mercy seatTakes a terrific toll on black pants suit bottoms
Because some of the best alien minds are surveying developments in numb disbeliefBecause 65% of the wood lice aren't losing any sleep at allBecause retreat in the face of even greater problems,
While not a bad idea, won't solve anythingBecause acceptance and consumption are just what the market needsTo shake it out of its trance-like belief in what it thinks alien minds are sayingBecause acceptance means acculturation to the masculine mills
Because happiness is merely their invention anyway, because Dame Pleasure is weariedOf Earth, has taken to the air, faded, fluttered down in a still, snow-Like inwardness to spill, scatter and be raked up with all the sibyl's other fallen leaves
In this enchanted-recount self-enclosure, like a small-town autumnWhere the commoners lie down nightly with what they have madeHappen, amid the bedded reeds of the vigilant event horizon
Because in this collapse its truths are receivedBy their souls, because of what this means to the odd weightlessness they feelBecause they have no way to grace their laurelsBeyond filling up the best alien minds, intent upon those peerless screens,
With the black pants suits of our resident historianWho's just keeping a chair among the blond clouds warm for them.November 2000

Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Senator from New York: photo by U.S. Senate, 2000

In this handout photo provided by the GPO, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on
July 16, 2012 in Jerusalem, Israel: photographer unknown via Zimbio, July 2014

"Hil[l]ary
Clinton does a fine impersonation of Tony Blair"[Hillary Clinton with
Benjamin Netanyahu, New York, 27 September 2012]: photo by AP, 27 September 2012 via Tony Gorman on twitter, 11 August 2014

Newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with
President-elect Barack Obama in Chicago, 1 December 2008: photo by Anne
Ryan/Sipa Press, 1 December 2008

United
States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu speak before a meeting at the Regency hotel,
Thursday, September 27, 2012 in New York: photo by John Mnichillo / AP, 27 September 2012

White House War Room during operation to assassinate Osama bin Laden: photo by U.S. Government 2 May 2011

Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2005. After
awkward episodes as first lady, she proved to be Israel’s friend as
senator: photo by Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times, 1 January 2009

Israeli President Shimon Peres (R) and US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton speak after a joint press conference on July 16,
2012 in Jerusalem, Israel. Clinton is in Israel to discuss diplomacy
with Iran, Syria and Egypt in addition to peace talks regarding the
Middle East: photo by Lior Mizrahi via Zimbio, 16 July 2012

In this handout provided by U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu (R) on November 21, 2012 in Jerusalem: photographer unknown via Zimbio, July 2014

Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meeting at a peace
summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on September 14, 2010: photo by AP, 14 September 2010

Tom Clark blogs on Vanitas Site!!

For the foreseeable future, Tom Clark has agreed to blog on the Vanitas magazine site! This is amazing news, as Tom is not only prolific — but also highly entertaining, a genius, extremely knowledgeable, etc. Look for the "TC" tag in front of his post titles — and enjoy!

Vanitas 7 : The Self

For the seventh and final issue of VANITAS, we examine the idea of The Self. The work featured in issue 7 tests just how far the self can be stretched, partially as an exercise in self-expression, partially in search of what used to be called experience. Self, not so much in personae as in faces, in the sense the Mods used the term — referring to someone with style, perhaps within a culture of style, but an individual expression of that culture, or perhaps someone who can seemingly invent her own style, just standing there.

Available from Libellum !!!

Tom Clark: The New WorldTom Clark: TRANS/VERSIONSWe are excited to announce the publication of not just one but two books by Tom Clark — first and foremost his remarkable collection of new poems, The New World. In these poems, Clark trains his limpid style and eye on current street life in Berkeley, California. Clark's observational skill is informed by acute social critique and most significantly a heightened sense of time's rapid passage. There is personal history here, too, in poems to Philip Whalen and Robert Duncan. Youth is seen in retrospect, working up to present tense, ultimate doubts as it ends, or seems to. This book is accompanied by Clark's TRANS/VERSIONS, seven poems that are translations or homages to modern masters. Available through Small Press Distribution.

Recent Libellum Publications : Norma Cole and Basil King

Norma Cole : Natural LightNorma Cole’s book presents new poems by a modern master of the found and formulated — this book is divided into three sequences: “Pluto’s Disgrace,” “In Our Own Backyard,” and “Collective Memory.” Personal, global, universal: all three shift and interlock in repeating cadences. Their lock on reality provides consolation for these times.

Basil King : In The Field Where Daffodils GrowPart of King’s series “Learning to Draw” that brings to bear his talents both as writer and visual artist. This book contains the autobiography of a painting and contemplation of some heroes — Hartley, H.D., Williams, Demuth, Giotto, Nijinsky, Emily Carr, Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. "Paintings stay alive because people look at them. And when they don't, they die."